October 21, 2015

So let me tell you about a pretty cool online entertainment subscription service. It’s a new platform where you can find all your entertainment needs, under one roof! And if you are a lover of books…omg… this is something that you definitely want to check out! Not only does it have a pretty wicked interface for books, but you can also play games, watch movies, and listen to music. Dude, it’s an entertainment haven!

I had the opportunity to try out this new media service, and let me tell you, as a book review and avid reader, Playster had a lot of the books that I’ve loved, have wanted to check out, and have craved to read. If you’ve been browsing the net, you may have heard such things as Harper Collins signing a content deal with Playster, along with Simon & Schuster. I’m positive the rest of the publishing world will follow.

After creating your account, the dashboard is pretty easy to navigate, with everything that you would need to move around the site easily found in the navigation bar on the top of the page. You have the ability to search via author name or book title, and you also get recommendations based on what you’re looking at. Can you say ever growing TBR list, people? The selection ranges from current to older and hosts various genres. I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the Young Adult/New Adult selection.

You have the ability to save any titles that you want to read into your “library” for easy access. I tried Playster on my iPad, my iPhone, and on my PC. It’s a beautiful thing when you use on the computer! I found that while using it on my iPad, it would freeze up or crash, but it wasn’t a regular occurrence, and I’m sure that those type of bugs will be fixed in no time. I find reading on my iPhone rather bothersome, so let me tell you what I DID use Playster for with my phone.

So, not only do you get to read some amazing titles via Playster, you also have the ability to play games, listen to music, and watch some movies! I’ll be honest; I didn’t really give these options a thorough trial. I did however, have a quick looksee to see what was available.

The movies and the music available right now was not anything that I would have wanted to watch or listen to. The music was all old stuff, and I didn’t see any newer/current music tracks available. Perhaps that’ll change in the near future with deals, but at the moment, it isn’t something that I would pay to listen to.

Same goes with the movies. There are zero current movies on there, and it seems like most of the movies were “straight to DVD” type movies. Again, maybe that will change. Nothing in the movies section grabbed my attention either.

The games were quite interesting. Depending on whether you open the program on your computer or on your device (for me it was my iPad and iPhone), the games were different! The games that you can play on your PC looked interesting, and I’m positive there is something there for everyone! And the games that you can play on your device were ones that you would find in the App store (i.e . Flappy Bird, matching games, hidden treasure games). Again, I didn’t venture thoroughly into the gaming part of Playster.

So, final thoughts? For readers, Playster is definitely something I would recommend you check out. It was my favorite part of the whole thing. If the movies and music had a better selection, it would certainly be something that I would be into. As for the gaming…well, I’m not as much of a gamer as I used to be, but it had some great “pass the time” games that I can play on my phone.

What do you think? Is Playster something that you would want to check out?